


Back in the Unknown

by midsummernight13



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Sara is mentioned but doesn't make an appearence, Wirt is old
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-28 09:54:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8441179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midsummernight13/pseuds/midsummernight13
Summary: This was not Wirt’s house. Wirt wakes up in a place that is just different enough to make him uncomfortable, and he slowly realizes he's somehow managed to find his way back into the Unknown.





	

This was not Wirt’s house. Oh, it certainly _looked_ like his house. Large windows framed the room that resembled the bedroom that he had shared with his wife for the last thirty some-odd years. The bedroom was flanked by his wife’s studio and his study. His study was tidy, not a single piece of paper strayed from its proper place, and Sara’s studio was splattered with paint and dried clay, and bundles of pencils and paint brushes (She never had been able to work if her surroundings were too organized, Wirt noted with an odd mix of dismay and adulation that comes with being married for a couple decades) scattered around the room. A narrow oak staircase lead down to the living room, which flowed into the dinning room, which in turn gave way to a small, brightly colored kitchen. Wirt ran his hand over the kitchen’s marble counter-tops, his brow furrowed and his eyes staring at nothing in particular.

Everything was right. The layout of the house, the way the sun crept in through his bedroom window, the way the floorboards had creaked when he made his way down the stairs—everything was a perfect replica of his home.

“But it’s not mine,” he said to the empty kitchen. That in itself was a dead giveaway to the building’s false nature. Where was Sara? Where was her cat? True, Sara would often wake up early and take a walk around the neighborhood, but the cat was strictly an “indoors” sort of animal, and Wirt couldn’t go two feet without the creature weaving itself between his feet and trying to trip him. Now he couldn’t even find any fur sprinkled on the counter-top. Not to mention the fact that Sara always left a sticky note on the fridge if he was asleep when she left. And yet the refrigerator was bare and white as a field of snow.

For the first time since he’d woken up this morning a tremor of fear replaced his confusion. His throat and mouth felt dry as cotton as he hobbled from the kitchen to the dining room and then to the living room, his eyes darting back and forth in search of proof of his wife’s existence. A scarf, a pair of shoes, a hairbrush, anything. He threw open closet doors in search of her clothes, and pushed books off of their shelves in an attempt to find some of her favorite books, and he found…nothing. The only proof in the house that Sara existed at all was her studio, which, now that Wirt was looking at it carefully, seemed empty and sad, as if the room were waiting for the return of a lost friend.

The feeling of emptiness radiating from the room made Wirt’s stomach twist in on itself, and he shoved the door shut in an attempt to cut the feeling off. The emptiness wormed its way through the cracks between the floor and door and through the key-hole and clawed at him like a feral cat. Wirt backed away from the closed off room. As he backed away his heel slipped on the first step of the stair case and he stumbled backwards. His arms reeled in the air, seeking to grab a hold of the railing.

His fingers grazed the smooth wooden surface but failed to grasp the railings. His feet fell out from beneath him and fell to his bottom, the momentum of the fall coupled with the downward incline of the stairs made his feet fly over his head, and Wirt tumbled down the stairs in a series of backwards somersaults. Wirt’s fear (though absolute certainty may have been a better word) that he would break his neck or one of his hips made the fall last forever. When he hit the bottom of the stairs his head hit the wooden floorboards with loud smack.

The shock of his tumble pinned Wirt to the ground and he lay there for several moments (or maybe it was a few seconds, or maybe a year) just blinking up at the ceiling. Then he slowly pushed himself into a sitting position and dragged himself to his feet. The joints in his knees and arms popped and cracked as he worked his way up to an upright position. His face scrunched in pain, but the fact that he was somehow able to stand overrode most of it. Wirt slowly ran his hands down his arms and sides, checking for serious injuries. When he found none he burst out is a surprised, nervous laugh. Wirt wasn’t delusional, he knew he was old, knew that his bones had all the sturdiness of a dead leaf. He should have been heap of broken bones moaning in pain at the bottom of the stairs. Sure it hurt, but there was no way he should be standing. The odd combination of pain and miraculous avoidance of death gave Wirt an odd sense of invincibility. He froze as the sensation washed over him.

He knew this feeling. It was an old one that had been buried in the back his mind for years, but… No. This, the oddly familiar feeling of avoiding imminent destruction with only a few sore muscles and bruises, had only happened a few times before in his entire life, and all of them during his time in the Unknown. After he and Greg and nearly been run over by a train and half-drowned in a pond. After he and his brother had almost died. It wasn’t like he could have fallen asleep and have just woken up someplace new; the Unknown didn’t work that way.

Or maybe it did. Wirt had to admit that he wasn’t the most knowledgeable on the Unknown’s inner workings. Perhaps he had been magicked into the woods that had tugged on his dreams since he was a teenager. Maybe he was still dreaming, and what was happening was only the subconscious remnant of what had happened in his childhood.

He grasped at these hopes as he made his way to the front door. They crumbled when he pushed the door open. He was greeted by the sight of a brightly lit forest. A dirt path lead from the porch into the woods. The path seemed to beckon to him and draw him into the deeper, darker parts of the forest. The path wouldn’t have called to him like that if he’d still been alive. Sara, the cat, even his neighbors, were gone. Or, perhaps more accurately, _he_ was gone. Gone into the Unknown. Again. He and Greg had been lucky to get out the first time; he didn’t particularly feel like he’d be able to do a repeat performance. He was trapped.

Wirt’s hands began to shake and he grabbed onto the door frame to steady them. He stared at the path in front of him then slowly turned his gaze to the woods beyond. The branches of the closest trees waved back in forth in the brisk autumn breeze—waving to him it felt like.

‘ _Hello Wirt_ ,’ the forest seemed to say, ‘ _Hello old friend. It’s good to see you. Come take a walk. Stay a while; it’s not like you can leave anyway._ ’ Wirt resisted the Unknown’s call just long enough to run to the hall closet and grab a pair of worn-out sneakers (not a thought was given to the fact that he was still wearing his pajamas). He forced them onto his feet as he stumbled across his porch and onto the path, leaving the front door swinging open behind him. He hesitated for a moment—the sunlit woods seemed safe now, but his run in with the Beast was a difficult to forget—but in the end he forced himself to keep moving.


End file.
